One thing that all high-performing go-to-market (GTM) teams have in common is an operating system that helps drive alignment, transparency, and focus on goal attainment.
A well-run GTM operating system clarifies what’s important to the business and the levers that impact growth.
When I start working with a company, one of the first things we usually do together is implement a GTM operating system based on three pillars:
Growth is driven by go-to-market strategy and initiatives, but in my experience, the operating system enables it. Without it, there is no rudder to keep everyone on track and rowing in the same direction.
The outcomes of reviewing the right metrics at the right intervals with the right people in the room can change a company’s growth trajectory.
“In general, a framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.” -TechTarget
The foundation of any GTM operating system is the framework for tracking metrics and growth levers. The data included in the GTM framework is unique to each company but should consist of leading indicators and a way of quickly assessing goal-against-actual outcomes.
The layout of the metrics is important. It needs to be structured so that performance is easy to understand, and the right adjustments can be made to impact performance moving forward.
The framework I favor is a single document that includes all critical GTM data. Spoiler alert: The format itself isn’t fancy or complex. It’s just one big spreadsheet with lots of tabs.
When I ask teams to use a single sheet as their GTM framework, it’s sometimes a hotly debated topic because all the data collected into the sheet already lives in other systems. There can be some internal resistance to bringing data into a single file from many disparate sources.
Of course, the single file does not replace the dashboards and systems where the data resides. In fact, if I look at the GTM framework once a week, I’m probably in the real-time dashboards ten times a week.
The framework is critical because it brings the most important GTM data into a unified, connected view set up in a specific way that makes it simple to understand the GTM growth levers and how the business is performing against targets. In my experience, you can’t get this from automated mega reports or dashboards. The metrics you need in your framework are too specific and too interconnected—they have to be in a unified view rather than in disparate systems.
With the right framework, we can see where we are doing well and where we aren’t and make quick decisions to improve. It makes data inspection, assessment, and action so much easier.
Without the framework, every time you sit down to look at GTM performance, you need several files pulled up, a bunch of tabs open in your browser, and a lot of aspirin. The review usually goes off the rails when someone’s looking at Salesforce, where it says we got 100 MQLs last month from LinkedIn. Someone else is looking in Marketo, which says something different, and someone else is looking in the LinkedIn file and sees there were only 25. It always goes like this. Always.
When everything isn’t in a single view, there is no clarity or consistency. There can’t be team-wide visibility into the metrics that drive growth when you have to pull up data that lives in many different places in varying formats. And yes, dashboards do solve for this….to a point. However, part of an effective review of data is the format you are using. For me, that format needs to be a single view into all the key metrics in one place, how we’re pacing against goals right now, and how we’re doing week over week.
That’s why I always recommend starting with a metrics framework that’s created in one sheet.